1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a display apparatus for a sewing machine, in which a pattern can be edited via a pattern edit screen, and to a display apparatus that can display the pattern with high resolution.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional electronically controlled sewing machine capable of embroidering the ROM (nonvolatile memory) stores pieces of pattern data related to utility stitch patterns such as straight and zigzag, character patterns such as letters and numerals, and embroidery patterns such as a symbol, for example, an animal or a flower. Patterns are shown on the display, and a desired one is searched over screens and selected thereon. For embroidery patterns edit processes, such as changing the sewing position of the pattern relative to an embroidery frame holding a material according to necessity, enlarging, reducing, and rotating the image of pattern, are performed via the pattern selection screen.
For example, a sewing data process device disclosed in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 5,769,013, has a pattern editing screen, which is used for editing, including a layout display. The pattern editing screen comprises a pattern display area in which a pattern to be sewn is displayed on the left, and function keys acting as touch keys placed on the right of the pattern display area such as move keys to move a pattern in each of eight directions, a zoom in key to magnify the pattern, and a zoom out key to reduce the display of the pattern. Various editing processes can be made on an embroidery pattern displayed on the pattern editing screen.
A sewing pattern display device disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-137468, has a liquid crystal display equipped with a control panel. A selected pattern is displayed on the layout area displayed on the display. Based on the magnification/reduction ratio set in the magnification/reduction input device provided on the control panel, only a specified portion of the pattern can be partially magnified or reduced on the display.
As mentioned above, in the sewing data process device described in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 5,769,013, embroidery patterns are edited through the use of a plurality of function keys. Therefore, the function keys are larger than the pattern display area for ease of use.
The size of the pattern display area is necessarily reduced by more than half of the screen. Accordingly, the magnification ratio can not be increased to magnify the display of the whole of the pattern, and the resolution to display the pattern in the pattern display area can not be raised.
Similarly, when the realistic image of the embroidery pattern found from the sewing data is displayed in the pattern display area, the image display area for editing can not be enlarged, and it is impossible to display images of stitches in detail. If a large-sized display is provided, the pattern display area can be enlarged. However, it leads to not only upsizing of the sewing machine but also raising of the manufacturing cost.
In the sewing pattern display device described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-137468, the layout screen is split in nine parts (three rows.times.three lines) based on the size of the embroidery frame, and only a specified split part is magnified to fill the layout screen. Although the size of the layout screen is unchanged, the size of the split part can be reduced to increase the magnification ratio, thereby seeing the split part as a larger view. However, this magnification is limited only to the split part and the entire pattern can not be magnified.